While Alan Menken and I were having dinner the night before Junior Theater Festival ’13 was to begin, he said to me, “You know, when I was a kid, what I really wanted to be was a rock star.”“You’ll feel like a rock start tomorrow ...

What’s the best aspect of this new Encores! production of Fiorello! that’s coming up at the end of the month?It will remind those who have forgotten what a fine show this Bock and Harnick musical is.We shouldn’t need reminding. After all, ...

When you think of it, one aspect of Annie has never made any sense.At the end of the show, everyone is having a wonderful time, and not simply because it’s Christmas Day. Miss Hannigan, Rooster and Lily have been thwarted and captured; Annie ...

The show that was about to be presented was The Boy Friend, but what had happened 30 minutes before the performance turned the show into 42nd Street.Here at Centenary College in Hackettstown, New Jersey, there’s a magnificent program for kids ...

“Exciting New Musical 1963.”So said the circular yellow sticker that London Records pasted on the cover of every original cast album of Riverwind. Actually, if we’re going to get technical about it, Riverwind was really “Exciting New ...

Now that Bring It On is finishing its extended run on Broadway, the time will soon come when you’ll be able to present it, too. It’s Music Theatre International’s newest acquisition.Because the musical deals with cheerleaders, high school ...

Let’s face it: most directors of professional or community productions of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee cast too old.They seem to ignore the fact that this competition is supposed to be for teens. Do they fear that bookwriter Rachel ...

Thirty-one years ago this week, Broadway saw the last of MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG.Granted, the then-new 1981 Stephen Sondheim musical had a hard act to follow: SWEENEY TODD, the 1979 musical (or opera, if you insist) that most everyone agrees is the ...

“Fifty years from now, they'll still be arguing about the grassy knoll, the Mafia, some Cuban crouched behind a stockade fence.”So says Lee Harvey Oswald's role model in Assassins. And as of this week, the 49th anniversary of the assassination ...

I’ve talked about many a musical in the last year, but now I’ll talk about a play I saw on Broadway last week: The Heiress by Ruth and Augustus Goetz.Not simply because Moisés Kaufman’s production is wonderful, or because Jessica Chastain, ...